With this week’s program, we say goodbye to our Associate Producer and Co-host, Michelle Alimoradi as she prepares to challenge the Big Apple for life’s next stage. Any attempt to calculate the worth of Michelle’s 5-year tenure with TruthToTell would fail in understatement. Both an invaluable associate and an interviewer curious beyond her years, Michelle has been this producer/host’s right arm – and my full-body substitute during crucial periods, especially over the last year. We wish her well in her new adventure– in the hope that adventure best describes her departure for New York City. Everyone around TruthToTell and KFAI, let alone the other media groups she’s been connected with here in the Cities, already miss her. I feel a bit amputated at the right shoulder, while confident new growth will come with the addition of KFAI and broadcast veteran, Siobhan Kierans, whose Irish positivity is bound to infuse itself into our programs and operation. And, so we welcome her as well. Bon Voyage, Michelle.

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With the uprisings in the Middle East, Egypt and the Balkans, to name but a few, one is left wondering what revolution in the USA would look like if similar conditions prevailed – that of top-down militarism and anti-constitutional pursuits in the name of national security here.

Wait. Isn’t that what drone strikes, military interventions and a national domestic spying network the envy of a Robert Ludlum novel (including the use of local police as paramilitary troops keeping constitutional dissent suppressed) are all about?

So, where’s the real revolution?

A divided nation, fed by its leaders, moneyed corporations and commercial media, continues to be split – and not by partisan agendas so much as strange bedfellows and both the majority and minority parties at odds with themselves over what constitutes liberty: ceaseless intrusions into the privacy and peace of mind of citizens residing in a true democracy? Or the belief that half or more of the world – including domestic dissenters – are out to dismantle this democracy, thus requiring constant vigilance and unreasonable searches and seizures that defy the 4th Amendment, not to mention longstanding assumptions that we are a free and transparent body politic.

Say what you will about Edward Snowden’s breach of that security and whistleblowing about the intricate apparatus – the National Security Agency (NSA) and its friends in law enforcement – at work to track the lives of every man-jack of us in all our movements and conversations; Mr. Snowden has opened wide the heretofore secret operations that tap phones and track people, labeling their targets with unproven assumptions about what constitutes loyalty to one’s country and one’s governments.

This has all led to a flurry of defenses and lawsuits and proposed legislation to rein in all of it as well as bills to actually expand such “authority” beyond the unfettered use of FISA courts and warrantless wiretaps. And the bills are not coming by partisan divides in the Congress. The two primary bills challenging senators and representatives to stand up and be counted on one side or the other of this notion that we’re either in a perpetual war – even among ourselves – or with unseen enemies abroad or a Constitutional democracy that screams out for compliance with those fundamental tenets as embraced in the Bill of Rights.

The two warring measures now in the Congress are: the USA Freedom Act what supporters are calling a bicameral and bi-partisan effort to curb the excesses of our spy agencies, and sponsored by no less that Wisconsin Republican Rep. James Sensenbrenner and Vermont Democrat Sen. Patrick Leahy; and the FISA Improvements Act, being pushed by California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, which, although labeled as a reform measure, expanding the NSA’s secret operation and the FISA courts, allowing undefined "law enforcement agencies" to query its foreign intelligence databases, even for U.S. persons, without a warrant.

TTT’s ANDY DRISCOLL and MICHELLE ALIMORADI query just three of the many local and national advocates and organizations in the thick of this legislation and of lawsuits challenging the NSA’s authority as well as the role of corporate media consolidation in buttressing its work.

MOST RECENT SHOW

Just how much is a human life worth on the black market? Where does Minesota rank in this terrible crime? The answer might astound you. January was Human Trafficking Awareness month. TruthToTell took a long look into the many forms of exploitation and enslavement happening at the hands of trafficking lords in Minnesota. This week we encore Part One. With these crimes often happening in plain sight right under our noses, we seek to find ways to be keen to these types of crimes as they are happening, and learn the best ways to offer help to victims. In this series, we’ll also speak to survivors of these heinous crimes about their experiences as a victim as well as their lives after breaking free.

Minnesota’s native women, particularly along the North Shore, are disproportionately affected by sex trafficking. Taken from their homes through coercion or desperation, they are often spread around the state and the country providing services to eager Johns (the majority of them are white males, according to research by PRE, Prostitution Research & Education). These practices affect an average of 100 girls under the age of 18 every month in Minnesota, according to FBI reports.

But Native women are not the only ones affected by these tragedies. Current victims are of all races and ages, as well as domestic and international origins. Sex trafficking is also not the only form; other trafficking victims are exploited for free labor, producing babies, supplying human organs, and more. The perpetrators can range from strangers dangling a carrot before desperate people, kidnappers, crooked doctors and lawyers, to one’s own family member.

New laws have been passed in recent years to protect victims who have the courage to try to break free from their servitude, so they are not punished for the crimes they were driven to commit against their will or deported for an illegal immigration status they have no control over. There have also been landmark decisions recently concerning the punishment of trafficking perpetrators. Just last week, Ramsey County issued an unprecedented 40 year prison sentence to Otis Washington, for his involvement in a family operated sex trafficking ring. And as you read this, more policies are being drafted.

TTT’s Andy Driscoll and Michelle Alimoradi talk with our guests about these points and more this Monday at 9am on TruthToTell.

JEFF BAUER: Director of Public Policy and Civic Engagement, The Family Partnership, Master’s degree in Public Policy, Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, helped pass lead Safe Harbor law in Minnesota that protects children from trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation.